Tag Archives: addiction recovery

Women’s psychological health has actually become a source of growing concern in this nation, as females’s rates of alcohol addiction and other drug dependencies, particularly heroin and opiates, continue to rise at an alarming speed. This is one side of a story that must be informed. Another more enthusiastic side of the very same story also requires telling– about the healing success rates amongst women who go on to get treated for compound abuse …

Binge Drinking and Alcoholism

” Drinking is eliminating two times as many middle-aged white ladies as it did 18 years earlier,” a 2016 post in The Washington Post grimly declared. The article went on to highlight in painstaking information how women are “drinking themselves to death,” indicating information like the following:

A rising variety of emergency room gos to for alcohol intoxication among ladies between the ages of 18 and 64.

An upwardly trending alcohol-related death rate for females ages 35 to 54.

Opiate Overdosing

Alcohol is not the only perpetrator linked in a growing spate of addiction and co-occurring mental disorders among America’s adult female population. Other drugs, specifically opiates, likewise help to discuss how the suicide rate in ladies has reportedly risen by 50 percent. Think about, for instance, these 2017 findings by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health, regarding the years 1999-2015:

The rate at which females passed away from prescription opiate overdoses increased by almost 500 percent (compared to a roughly 200 percent increase amongst guys).

Heroin deaths among women increased at more than two times the rate than among males.
Deaths from artificial opiate overdose increased 850 percent in females.

How Treatment Can Help with Addiction

Such statistics would be purely gloom and doom for women, were it not for research study elsewhere that suggests ladies respond exceptionally well to addiction treatment (SEE: help with addiction) — or a minimum of perform much better than their male counterparts with respect to key criteria for success in treatment and early recovery:

Females in substance abuse treatment are less most likely to regression than men in substance abuse treatment, according to a report by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). (The report also found that when females do regression, it is generally for factors that vary from guys’s, such as a romantic attachment.).

At the seven-month mark following rehab, ladies who finished addiction treatment were nine times most likely to be abstinent than females who did not total treatment– whereas guys who completed treatment were only 3 times most likely to be abstinent than men who did not total treatment, a 2004 research study in Journal of Addictive Diseases (For females, mitigating elements that adversely affected their abstaining rates were the presence of a serious psychiatric health problem and/or the perception that their life was out of control.).

And throughout the longer-term arc of healing, women who complete treatment for addiction likewise tend to do much better than guys who have actually finished treatment– this despite typically dealing with more barriers to substance abuse treatment in the very first location. For instance, ladies who have remained in alcohol treatment have better long-term recovery results than guys who have actually been in alcohol treatment, a 2005 research study in the journal Addiction.

Treatment Options

On the basis of these findings, any woman with a drug or alcohol problem has every reason to give treatment a possibility. Here are some treatment options to think about, based on research recommending they can enhance recovery results for ladies:.

Rehab programs that use mindfulness-based therapy– Mindfulness-based exercises are now a feature of many rehab programs, having actually been revealed to increase self-awareness and resilience to cravings and other drug or alcohol triggers. In a study earlier this year, a variation of mindfulness-based therapy referred to as “Mindful Awareness in Body-oriented Therapy” enhanced healing results for ladies with compound usage disorders.

Gender-specific treatment programs– The jury is still out as to whether these programs lead to better healing outcomes than those connected with more conventional rehab programs. Nevertheless, research study cited by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that females who get gender-specific substance abuse treatment are more likely to be used 12 months after treatment admission than ladies in standard programs. (The exact same research study went on to note that females who ended up rehabilitation also increased their odds of gainful work afterwards.).

The current-day addiction epidemic may be alarming with respect to its staggering effect on women in this country. But it likewise does not need to be an irreversible death sentence. Thanks to treatment, many females have gone on to recover from alcohol, opiates and other drugs. There is no reason the next story of healing could not be yours.